The U.S. EPA, the European Union Commission on the Environment, the State of California are among the government organizations that have come out on the side of healthy materials for our built environment. In addition, there are a growing number of associations and firms engaged in collecting data on toxic materials that should be avoided, sharing their information with the public. They include the Healthy Building Network ‘s Pharos Project, Clean Production Action, Perkins + Will’s Precautionary List, Living Building Challenge and that organization’s Watch List, and the various LEED programs, such as HC and Pilot.

Most recently, the first open standard format for reporting the content and hazards in building products was launched at Greenbuild 2012. Called the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Open Standard Version 1, the program is managed by a non-profit group of collaborators. The HPD Collaborative is lead by the Pilot Project Committee of 29 building product manufacturers and 50 expert reviewers from across the building industry. The collaborative is in the process of developing, maintaining, and evolving the HPD Open Standard to meet the growing demand from the design and specifying community for health information on the many products used in our buildings. Included in this pilot group is the Canadian furniture manufacturer Teknion. In an effort to build the case for HPD, starting from the supplier’s point of view, I asked Tracy Backus, LEED AP ID+C, director of sustainability programs at Teknion U.S. to answer a few questions. Here she talks about what one manufacturer is doing to safeguard human health, and the Earth that gives us life.

Susan S. Szenasy: As a member of the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Working Group, in the manufacturing sector, and with Teknion’s long-term commitment to environmental health, could you tell us why your firm has decided to join this particular group? And what are your hopes for outcomes?

Tracy Backus: We were asked by Google to participate originally.  As we looked more closely at our history and how Teknion has already made steps to reduce chemicals from our products, like PVC, it was a natural for us to begin the work of full disclosure to the public. The challenge was developing a method that worked for all manufactures of building materials. That is the work of the HPD.

SSS: I understand you heard about HPD from a client, Google, in search of more transparency in products’ chemical/material content, as these relate to human health effects. What was Google looking for?

TB: Google is aligning its business to protect the health and well-being of it’s employees by building and procuring products that eliminate chemicals of concern, identified by the EPA, Living Building Challenge, and the National Cancer Institute. They are investing and, therefore, expect the same of manufacturers to advance the industry to research and develop safer materials for the built environment. Read more…

Buckminster Fuller, the architect who gave us the geodesic dome and championed socially-responsible design before we even had a term for it, was a very quotable man. His line about design’s responsibility “to make the world work for 100% of humanity … without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone” gets the most airtime, for obvious reasons. But another of his declarations seems today especially pointed, given the large-scale environmental and economic problems we currently face and the sense of crisis they engender: “We are called to be the architects of the future, not its victims.”

The Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI) holds the annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge, now in its fifth year, to identify and honor precisely those architects (or entrepreneurs, scientists, et al.; it’s a broad use of the term) who can demonstrate their entry’s ability to address ecological problems through the sort of systems thinking Bucky himself advocated. Fittingly, the competition doesn’t solicit solutions to a single issue chosen in advance; instead, each entrant is left to argue how the specific problem they’ve decided to tackle can act as a leverage point for broader change. The hefty $100,000 prize is intended to support an initiative that showcases both pragmatic tangibility and visionary capacity, that operates systemically rather than in isolation. On Wednesday evening, in a ceremony following a symposium jointly held by the BFI and the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design, the BFI announced the winner for 2012: The Living Building Challenge.

The Energy Lab at Hawaii Preparatory Academy, a certified Living Building. Courtesy Flansburgh Architects.

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“Patchwork”, Living City Challenge Entry

The sustainability rating systems—Passive House, Living Building Challenge, and Net Zero (a subset of the Challenge)—appear in isolated, new construction projects. The promise and perversity of trying to pick out sustainability targets, building by building, within a tightly woven urban fabric can be examined in Philadelphia.

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Disappointment has become an everyday feeling since 2008 for those of us in the design and construction fields, as we saw too many of our pet projects dematerialize. But the loss is especially painful when a project has more potential for innovation than others. For me, the recent decision of the Oregon State Legislature not to fund the Oregon Sustainability Center was devastating, but I am still hopeful for a powerful outcome.

Rendering courtesy of SERA Architects and GDB Architects

The team behind the Oregon Sustainability Center (OSC) has offered up a visionary prototype for tomorrow’s built environment. The center was designed to demonstrate how buildings can be resource neutral or even restorative. The design for the 130,000 sq. ft., seven-story OSC included classroom, conference, research and exhibit space. Seen as home to leading environmental and sustainable development organizations of all sectors — public, private, nonprofit, and higher education — the OSC was to be a true living laboratory, a sustainability beacon for Oregon.

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Achieving the Living Building Challenge certification is like sustainability boot camp. A building can only be evaluated after it has been built, and then the process takes a year. Very few projects manage to live up to the exacting standards of the Challenge –  three buildings were finally found worthy last year. But last week, the Energy Lab at the Hawai’i Preparatory Academy became the fourth certified Living Building in the world. This in itself is cause for celebration, but the achievement is all the more significant because the building is a school. Read more…

When Bob Berkebile approached the American Institute of Architects in the late 1980s to seek funding for research into sustainable architecture, he was told that it sounded more like an environmental problem than a professional problem—in short, “No, thanks.” Fast forward to 2011 and his firm, BNIM, has won the AIA National Architecture Firm Award, for its achievements in sustainable design.

For a man committed to reducing carbon footprints, Berekebile’s over 30 years of work in sustainability have left a lasting imprint on the green design movement. He founded the AIA’s National Committee on the Environment, helped create the U.S. Green Building Council, and contributed to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system, used internationally as a standard to design and evaluate sustainable buildings. For Berkebile, sustainability is about fostering a new ethic. When it comes to water, that means treating “every drop that falls from the sky as a precious resource.” We spoke with Berkebile to find out how that attitude is reflected in design.

University of Kansas Students: How important is responsible water management in designing sustainably?

Bob Berkebile: I think water is the biggest challenge we face. We have all focused a lot on energy, appropriately, because of our carbon footprint, and it’s disastrous effect on the environment. As a direct result of our bizarre attitude about water, coupled with climate change, many places on the planet are already suffering for lack of potable water. In the very near future, I think we’ll be finding in this country that people will be shooting one another over water, and that a lot of our food production will be limited. So, it’s really time for a transformation in how we think about water as a resource and to design an integrated water management system that is consistent with the number of people on the planet and the water that’s available to us. Read more…

Something truly monumental happened this week. The Living Building Challenge℠, the world’s most rigorous green building performance standard, crossed the divide that separates compelling ideas from proven strategies.

Omega Center for Sustainable Living: Farshid Assassi, courtesy of BNIM Architects.

Two projects, the Omega Center for Sustainable Living (designed by BNIM Architects) and the Tyson Living Learning Center (designed by Hellmuth + Bicknese Architects) have achieved full Living Building Certification, earning the right to be called the world’s greenest modern buildings. A third project, Victoria, BC’s Eco-Sense residence, earned partial program certification (“Petal Recognition”) for meeting all of the requirements in the Site, Water, Health and Beauty categories. The remaining two Living Building Challenge Petals in Version 1.3 are Energy and Materials. (A seventh Petal, Equity, was added to version 2.0, released in November 2009.)

The accomplishments of these pioneering teams are a victory for all of us. Read more…

Water and civilization are fundamentally intertwined. The world’s cities, great and small, have developed alongside the waterways that meet our drinking needs, irrigate our crops, transport our goods, and power our industries. Sadly, dependence has not bred respect. Our cities have been unkind to the rivers, streams, lakes and bays they border, and as we settle into the 21st century, we face a water crisis of epic proportions.

 Water is our most intimate resource (on a very fundamental level, we are water) and we are only too aware of the consequences of consuming water that has been contaminated by viruses or bacteria. We don’t need to look to the distant past for reminders: more than one billion people worldwide  currently lack access to clean drinking water, and water-borne illnesses kill over two million people each year.

 Unfortunately, developed countries have transformed fears about these very real sanitation concerns into complex and counterproductive phobias. As a result, we have constructed incredibly elaborate, energy-intensive systems that not only allow us ready access to potable water from our taps but also insist that we use this most precious resource to flush our toilets. These systems, born of our desire for purity, have substantially degraded our fresh water supplies.

The EPA estimates that at least 40,000 times each year, combined sewage-overflows lead to the direct release of untreated sewage into the United States’ waterways. Read more…